Kill the Philosopher in Your Head a Review of Louis Althusser's
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Volume 25 February 2014 H8 thenewinquiry.com The New Inquiry Magazine is licensed under a creative commons license [cc-by-nc-nd 3.0] , 1935 Mad Love Cover: Cover: Editor-in-Chief Rachel Rosenfelt Creative Director Imp Kerr Executive Editor Rob Horning Senior Editors Emily Cooke, Malcolm Harris Managing Editor Joseph Barkeley Editors Atossa A. Abrahamian, Adrian Chen, Max Fox, Samantha Hinds Garcia, Sarah Leonard, Willie Osterweil Associate Editors Tim Barker, Erwin Montgomery Editors at Large Aaron Bady, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi Contributing Editors Elizabeth Greenwood, Nathan Jurgenson, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Ayesha A. Siddiqi Arts Editor at Large Jesse Darling A/V Editor Michelle Groskopf Puzzlemaster Jonathan Zalman Special Projects Natasha Lennard, John McElwee Business and Development Will Canine Reader and Advisor Michael Seidenberg Founding Editors Rachel Rosenfelt, Jennifer Bernstein, Mary Borkowski INTERVIEW REVIEWS Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails Kill the Philosopher in Your Head An interview with parenting a review of Louis Althusser’s On the educator Rosalind Wiseman Reproduction of Capitalism by Malcolm Harris, 7 by Anne Boyer, 38 ESSAYS CROSSWORD PUZZLE A Change of Heart Dating in the Expanded Field by Jonathan Zalman, 42 by Mal Ahern and Moira Weigel, 11 Hate Sinks COLUMN by Jason Wilson, 17 Unsolicited Advice for Living Black Metal Is Sublime in the End Times by Adrian Van Young, 21 by Michael Seidenberg, 43 Everybody’s Doing It by Maxwell Neely-Cohen, 26 Consciously or Unconsciously by JW McCormack, 31 H8 Note “THOSE who hate you can’t win un- being haters. Yet visit almost any well-trafficked comment less you hate them. And then you destroy yourself,” said thread and haters outnumber the rest. not Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi but that gentle soul The Internet has revealed, perhaps enabled, spec- Richard Nixon. Since the death of God, hate has taken the tacular hostility. Fame especially comes at a cost. It is place of sin as society’s transcendent no-no. Hatred of hate particularly expensive for women, who are guaran- crosses political divides, deployed to justify the war on teed misogynist hate mail upon achieving any online terror (“they hate our freedoms”) and to attack racist and prominence. As trolls and cyberbullies emerge as so- homophobic violence. As with hipsters, few people cop to ciety’s new bêtes noires, “Don’t read the comments” is necessary advice for the thin-skinned—which, it turns makes such poor propaganda not only because it’s writ- out, describes most of us. We’re good at dishing it, bad at ten by talentless idiots who see society as their own pri- taking it. Did the Internet merely remove a few technical vate kampf. The disjunction between the genocidal goals boundaries formerly repressing some Hobbesian truth of such über-haters and the humanizing nature of litera- of human nature? Is hate, one answer to the failure of net ture may stymie the fascists before they’ve even started. democracy, built into its very architecture? Or are haters And what of the banality that hate is not the op- just gonna hate? posite of love but rather its accomplice? For Mal Ahern At the front lines of this war is the comment mod- and Moira Weigel, there’s something in the structure erator. Predominantly female, these workers delete the of love that keeps breeding all this animosity. “Dating most malicious comments before they reach readers’ in the Expanded Field” attempts to define just what we eyes. In “Hate Sinks,” Jason Wilson demonstrates that the mean when we say dating, and why it keeps making us so uncivil standards of Internet discourse depend on the la- dysfunctional. A brief history of courtship and a series bor of young women. Even online, women can’t escape of structural investigations reveal that the answer is “it’s their roles as affective pressure valves. complicated.” In a history of a different sort of roman- Of course, hate does its nasty work off the Web, tic hatred, Adrian Van Young connects the dots between too—especially in school, where kids notoriously Death Metal and Lord Byron. Like Wagner, Wolves in the learn how to be mean, if they learn anything at all. Be- Throne Room is meant to be played as loudly as possible. ing popular used to be a shield for a few. Yet yesterday’s Do the anti-Enlightenment aesthetic excesses of the Ro- clear pecking order has been replaced by a tangle of af- mantics find an echo in the anti-Christian nihilistic vio- filiations and subgroups, as Maxwell Neely-Cohen ar- lence of Death Metal? “Black Metal Is Sublime” shows gues in “Everybody’s Doing It.” Now everyone is a bul- that the similarities between the two can be measured in ly and everyone is a target. Don’t blame peer pressure, more than decibels. which parents were always more worried about than Ought we to join the chorus and condemn the con- kids; blame adults, screwing things up more seriously demners, despise the despisers? What good will it do? than ever. Interviewed here about her new book, Mas- Censure has hardly dissuaded the trolls, let alone the terminds and Wingmen, writer and parenting educator white-supremacist parties gaining traction in European Rosalind Wiseman has some ideas for improvement. elections. Yet here, as in most things, it’s better to ignore Children and teens should be introduced to rather Nixon than to follow him. To reduce hate to affective en- than protected from complexity, she says. They de- emy No. 1 one is to blur the distinction between the big- serve to be treated with dignity rather than the usual oted grievance of the man who blames his failed business condescension. on immigrants and the righteous fury of the imprisoned Not so the Nazis, the stock example of simplemind- toward her jailor. Not all hatreds were born equal. Some ed hatred. Nazis haunt every conversation about hate should be quashed; a few should be felt, with conviction. crimes and racist violence. So why do they make such “I hate rarely,” said Anaïs Nin, “though when I hate, I a poor showing in literary history? With “Conscious- hate murderously.” She was talking about penis sucking, ly or Unconsciously,” JW McCormack takes on Ameri- Dutch paintings, parties, and cold weather. She was also can white supremacy’s most famous novel, speculative- talking about banks. It sharpens the senses to have an en- fiction epicThe Turner Diaries. National Socialist fiction emy. Hate well or not at all. MALCOLM HARRIS 7 Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails ROSALIND WISEMAN interviewed by MALCOLM HARRIS The author and parenting educator behind Mean Girls talks sex, drugs, and her new book on boys ROSALIND Wiseman is the au- thor of Queen Bees and Wannabes, Queen Bee Moms & King Pin Dads, Owning Up Curriculum, “Boys, Girls & Other Haz- ardous Materials,” and the new book Masterminds and Wing- men: Helping Our Boys Cope with Schoolyard Power, Lock- er-Room Tests, Girlfriends, and the New Rules of Boy World. Here, an exchange with New Inquiry editor Malcolm Harris. about to critique my words. Because here’s what I imagine: Me standing in front of a group of high school students “tell- ing” them what their social world looks like and how they Your methodology is interesting—you include as co- should navigate it—and being completely wrong. I know producers the subjects you’re writing about. Can you tell I don’t get everything right—and I would never be able me a bit about how that works and why you choose to do to because every teen has their own experience—but the it, both in Masterminds and in your past work? thought of going in front of them telling them what their I included the boys/guys because I can’t imagine writ- lives are like makes my stomach turn. Not only because I ing the things I do without asking the people I am writing don’t think I have the right to do that but also because I have 8 SLUGS AND SNAILS AND PUPPY DOG TAILS a very deep motivation to not come across as yet another cially those with less power, should a young person be com- arrogant, presumptuous, patronizing adult. As I write this to pelled to “respect them?” No. you right now, I just saw that a student lit himself on fire at For example, why should a child respect his princi- a high school about 20 minutes away from me. How could I pal if that principal allows a student, teacher, coach, school possibly think I know what’s going on in kids’ lives without resource officer, etc. to dehumanize or humiliate another asking them? child? Dignity is also a touchstone for me. I constantly tell Your concern with dignity is the bedrock for Master- my students that even if you have every reason to seek re- minds, something I didn’t expect. Outside the World venge against someone else, your true character and how Social Forum or Chiapas, you don’t hear that language you choose to conduct yourself matters in moments of cri- very often, especially as it pertains to kids (a word I use sis and conflict. You don’t roll over, you’re not turning the broadly and nonpejoratively). Where does your concern other cheek, but it is the moment when you strive to treat with dignity come from? the person with inherent worth. I remind myself of this all I chose the language I use with and about young peo- the time because I am certainly not immune to feelings of ple very carefully because I believe they deserve to spoken to anger and desire for retribution.